I understand his legacy to represent those long-delayed conversations. This made me all the more surprised to discover the highly intellectual thought processes in his diaries, letters and, above all, the marginal notes he made in books. Our conversations were rarely deep and complex – he consistently tried to avoid them. Has your impression of your father changed, after working on his legacy? Did you make any discoveries? Shortly before his passing, at the opening of his big exhibition at C/O Berlin, he asked me in front of the cameras: “What do you think about my painting?” I answered, “I shall not be its advocate.” But you just never know.

“The whole person” - is how he always described his oeuvre. Are you taking care of your father's entire artistic oeuvre? His greatest success, however, came with photography. Will McBride always considered himself a visual artist he drew, painted and sculpted. Over time, all this has continued to evolve. At the same time, new collaborations were established, exhibitions took place, books were published, and questions of picture usage and rights were clarified. Collaborations and contracts from the past needed to be screened, and the material sifted through. By three years later, we had gained an overview of all relevant issues and we made ourselves a contractual agreement – as far as that's possible between three brothers. Shawn McBride: The very day he passed away, January 29, 2015, the whole archive was loaded onto a small truck and taken to a safe place. LFI: What state was the archive in when you and your brothers took it over? What are the most important tasks you face? We spoke with Shawn McBride about this work and his plans. It is an enormous challenge: there are around 350,000 negatives and the same number of slides to look through there are many prints to be preserved and the correspondence and writings from six decades need to be archived. In addition to extensive renovation work to be done on the property, Shawn’s aim is to examine the whole of his father's archive and, ultimately, to display the work in future exhibitions. His estate has now found a home in a small village in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania: the photographer's eldest son, Shawn McBride, has been living with his family at Bristow Manor in the community of Schorssow, since 2016. He travelled the world for his work, lived for a while in Italy, and finally made his home in Berlin, till the end of his life. He became a successful magazine and commercial photographer, with a studio in Munich and later in Frankfurt. A life with many chapters: Will McBride (1931-2015) came to Germany as a GI at the beginning of the fifties, and decided to stay.

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